Old habits and the brain

Those of us who are seasoned veterans of the annual rite of making New Years’ resolutions can be forgiven for being a bit cynical about the whole process. How many times have we and our friends pledged to stop doing something or start doing something — and then abandoned those pledges before Valentine’s Day?It’s easy to feel that it’s hopeless to try and quit smoking, eat less junk food, watch less television. It’s easy to feel that old habits never die.New scientific data, however, would indicate that there is still hope, even for those of us whose habits have had decades to entrench themselves.In October, scientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT released details of a study on the region of the brain that governs habitual behavior. The study was done on rats; in rats that section of the brain is called the infralimbic cortex. It’s in the prefrontal cortex, which a summary of the study explains is “where most thought and planning occurs, [and] is responsible for moment-by-moment control of which habits are switched on at a given time.”Habits are a good thing, according to a summary of the report at the website of the National Institutes of Health. They allow us to do repetitive actions — such as driving to work — without really thinking about them, which frees our brains up to think about other things. Some of our habits and repetitive actions, however, are unproductive or unhealthy, such as smoking and overeating — and both of those are habits that many people engage in while they are doing other things they aren’t really thinking about, such as driving to work or watching television.As anyone knows who has tried to break one of those negative habits, it’s really hard and it can seem sometimes like your brain is fighting against you. And in some ways, it is. For better or for worse, you are programmed to do certain things again and again, without thinking about them.The study done at the McGovern Institute indicates that it is possible to break those habits. It’s not clear yet how the discovery will translate into therapy for humans, however.In the studies done on the rats (in a maze, surprise!), a special light was used to shut off the infralimbic cortex just before one of the rats wandered down one corridor of the maze for no reason other than that it’s a habit. As soon as the infralimbic cortex was shut off, the rat stopped what it was doing and did something else.I doubt that a scientist is going to travel with me through my day and shine a light on my bad behaviors. And probably medical intervention isn’t really needed in my life. But scientists are hopeful that people with more serious conditions, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, might benefit from this discovery.And there was one little thread of information included in the study that we all might apply in normal life: The “bad” old behaviors can be broken but they are never forgotten. However, the brain will not revert to the old pattern as long as it has been replaced with a new one.